Welcome to another Bloggers’ Quilt Festival! I can’t believe it is that time again, already! I believe this is my 6th time to enter and it never gets old. I just love hopping around looking all the the beautiful eye candy. I love seeing what my friends have created and making new friends, too!

What I want to share this time around is a very special quilt that I gifted my brother this past Christmas. In the beginning, I think it was 2002, my 5 siblings and I began exchanging names and hand-made gifts. Every one gives different things, for me it is quilts. I think I have made two hand-quilted quilts for each of them and this is my most recent one.

I created this one for my younger brother who is a very outdoorsy kind of guy and having recently moved to “the hills”, I knew he was upgrading to a larger bed. Since his first quilt had been well used and loved, I knew this quilt had to be just as special, if not more so.

I threw around a lot of ideas and finally settled on a trail marker design based on a picture of one Ashley created at Film in the Fridge. I created my pattern in a little different way including a twist in the layout. I’ll share my version, as a tutorial, and link it here, very soon.

I chose more vintage feeling fabrics from my oldest stash, for this one. I included many fabrics that once belonged to our grandmother, the grandmother who instilled her love of sewing in me. I treasure each and every scrap of Grandma’s fabrics and try to include a bit in every quilt, but this one has more than the usual!

I worked up a quilting pattern that took advantage of the triangular shapes and created a continuity of stitching. I stitched 1/4″ inside each triangle. I then stitched 1/4″ outside each extending down to become a quilting line 1 1/4″ outside the block beside it. These quilting lines connect and flow throughout the quilt only being broken by the “trail”.

The solids are primarily Kona cottons, in a variety of pale neutrals. Any and all tans, beiges, grays, greens, blues, peaches and yellows were fair game.

This quilt is a throwback to my earliest quilts when I used muslin as the backing. I’m not sure how I evolved away from it, but I really do prefer the look and feel of it especially when using fabrics with a more vintage vibe. I also think that hand stitching shows up best on muslin. It is a really nice fabric to needle. Using Quilter’s Dream cotton batting along with Roc-lon Permanent Press muslin, in natural, contributed to the smooth quilting.

It finished out as a large queen at around 100 inches square. My fence is not quite high or wide enough between sections to show it all off, but you get the idea with only seeing about half of it!

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

To see all the quilts click on the box below, then each corresponding category.

To nominate your most favorite click here. You just copy and paste to put the web address of the quilt you like best into the box. After all nominations are in, from what I understand, voting with take place for all the different categories. So check back!

P.S.
I’ve had several people email me, not understanding how to nominate a quilt for the Viewer’s Choice award for the Bloggers’ Quilt Festival. You click here, then enter this

into the box, or the web address of the page of the quilt you are wanting to nominate. Add your email address at the bottom to verify, you have only nominated one quilter, that is all that is required for this round! I appreciate everyone who has deemed me worthy! Nominations end Friday.

Dropped by from CIGAWW – that’s a fab quilt and I love the change in direction, it makes the whole design so much more interesting. I’m a big fan of the muslin back – it places so much more emphasis on the quilting design and let’s the quilt top speak for itself. Really lovely 🙂

Your hand quilting is lovely! And I love the trail working its way through the quilt. I used to back my quilts in muslin too – I should move back to those days. I agree – hand stitching always looks lovely on muslin!

Thank you, Sara! You really should try muslin again, the quality seems a lot better than what I used long ago. After so many years of using Kona or other quilting fabrics, to quilt with, I forgot how nice a fine woven muslin can be!

Lovely quilting. Thanks for the tip on the muslin. My grandmother was a hand quilter and she often used muslin in her quilts. She was also very particular about which batting she would use. Her quilting was beautiful and shows very nicely and now I know why. When you quilt by hand the feel of the fabric and texture of the batting seem more important than with machine quilting. I have not hand quilted any quilts but now I think I may.

Those old quilts really are the best. I don’t understand with the fabrics and the battings that they used how they could hold up like they did, but they are still around. You should give it a try, hand quilting can be very relaxing and rewarding.

This is my first visit to your blog (through TGIFF) and I love your quilt you are putting up for the Blogger Festival. The quote really adds depth to the whole aesthetic and feel of the quilt along with your great outdoor picture. Lovely!

Wow I am completely bowled over by this beautiful quilt. My mother is an exceptional quilter and I am just starting out on my first ever quilt. You have done such an amazing job with this I wish you all the best of luck.

Awww. Thank you, Hanna! What a nice compliment.
Be patient with yourself on your first quilt and know that everything looks better after it is washed!! Be prepared to be addicted!! Welcome to the wonderful world of quilters!

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P.S. Sometimes my links, for products on Amazon, are linked to me so that if you buy something I get a little Amazon store credit. I didn't used to do this, but I started to recently because I was linking to Amazon anyway (hello, we all shop there) and I figured you wouldn't mind if Amazon has to give me a free book now and then. Just letting you know, to keep things legit around here.